ysabetwordsmith | Today's Adventures

Today we went out for my birthday.

We got lunch at Vera Cruz in Tuscola. Today's specials included a plate of 3 tacos el pastor, so we split that and they were delicious.

Then we got dessert at Flesor's Candy Kitchen. We shared a sundae of black walnut ice cream with caramel sauce, definitely a combination to remember. :D They had a huge selection of big Easter egg candies, of which I got milk chocolate raspberry and my partner Doug got white chocolate lemon. We hit the giant wall of free books and picked out several cookbooks: Super Smoothies, The Wild Diet, Paella, and Grand Prize Winners. My partner Doug also picked up a copy of Moby Dick.

We stopped at Graber's for a big bag of grass seed. They didn't have the kind I wanted, but I found something else that will hopefully work.

I wanted to visit Hippie Chick Thrifts, but sadly it was closed. We stopped at Vint-ish next door. They had a set of three beautiful watercolors of France -- the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and what I'm pretty sure was Montmarte. We didn't find anything to buy, though.

So we went down to Mattoon and visited Akasha Zamora instead. I picked out two stones, a bumblebee jasper and a ruby kyanite; plus a holder for a stone sphere that has a flower of life on the base. Very pretty.

We finished reading Taste of Home More Easy Everyday Cooking 2023. Among the recipes we marked were Strawberry Cooler, Creamy Bacon Mushroom Soup, Lemon Bread, Cherry Balsamic Pork Loin, and Frozen Chocolate Monkey Treats. Currently we are reading the Hot Date! cookbook, which is all about dates. It has some very interesting recipes.

It was then late afternoon, so we went home to offload the loot and take a break.

For supper, we went out to Mint India. We ordered the mint mushroom appetizer, an old favorite; butter naan; goat biryani, which came with raita; and mango shrimp curry, which came with rice; and fresh lime soda. The goat biryani was a bit on the spicy side, but pretty good. The raita was the best I've had. It's an easy dish to wreck, for all its simplicity -- I've had too sweet, too salty, too sour, weirdly bitter, and boring. This was perfectly balanced and subtly complex. I think it had cucumber and finely shredded carrot. We kept slathering it on the naan because it was just sooo good. Neither of us were impressed by the mango shrimp curry; the gravy was tasty but the shrimp were way overcooked. The fresh lime soda is best described as interesting. It was mildly sweet, with a tangy note from the lime, but the dominant flavor was actually herbal. I think it had mint in there too. Definitely something to order again on a hot day. For dessert we had gulab jamun. We brought home a huge bag of leftovers. :D

It has been a fun and wonderful day.